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Who Owns The Star Casino?
If you’re looking at a fun spot to play casino games Down Under, The Star Casino, which is located in Pyrmont, Sydney, is one of the most popular options in Australia. The venue has undergone all sorts of renovations and expansions in recent years, and even changed ownership. One thing that remains consistent is the product.
Players love to hit the tables, enjoy the entertainment and play real money casino games at the resort.
If you haven’t had a chance to visit yet, let’s take a deeper dive into this property as a whole and examine who actually owns the Stars Casino these days.
Who Owns The Property?
The Star Entertainment Group is currently the listed owner and operator of The Star Casino. This is a company that owns and operates a handful of other gaming hubs in Australia, including the Treasury Brisbane and The Star Gold Coast. They have big ambitions as they’re aiming to become one of the biggest resort companies in Australia.
Robbie Cooke is the Managing Director and CEO of the Star Entertainment Group, while Scott Wharton is the CEO of The Star Sydney Group Head of Transformation.
Previously, the casino was formerly known by Tabcorp years ago before it was sold over to the Star Entertainment Group. That’s when there was a name change. There are also their joint venture partners who are involved and those are Chow Tai Fook Enterprises and Far East Consortium.
The Venue
The venue itself is absolutely massive. It is actually the second-largest casino in Australia, trailing only Melbourne’s Crown Casino, which is a behemoth. This spot features two gaming floors, so you don’t have to look too long to find the game you’re looking for. It also has a bar and three restaurants where you can get libations and nourishment. If you plan to stay overnight, there are 351 hotel rooms and 130 serviced apartments.
In terms of hosting entertainment, the property also has a large 2,000-seat Sydney Lyric theatre and an even larger 3,000-seat even centre. That gives them the ability to host anything from superstar acts to award shows. Multiple episodes of Beauty and the Geek Australia were filmed at the property and even Raph Magazine used to hold their swimsuit model of the year competition at the Turbines Health Club near the casino.
It was already a sizable stud in the space, but the Star Casino underwent a big expansion just a few years ago. Not only did they want to create more gaming space, they wanted to update the spot. The former owners of the property submitted a large expansion plan that would be estimated to cost $475 million. The endeavor was to be called Project Star and part of it was to create a brand-new entrance and an entire new drop-off zone on the site.
It took three years for construction and renovations to be completed. By the time it ended, the initial cost expectations were completely surpassed (as is usually the case with these types of projects). The final cost came to an approximate $961 million. Many feel it was worth it, though, as the venue is now quite modern.
The gaming floors that are located at this venue offer excellent security as well, which is important nowadays. There are cameras located all over the roof with multiple table signs having cameras of their own to ensure that nothing bad is happening. When something goes awry, there are eyes on it and bodies to make sure nobody gets away. This visibility is also crucial, so that the property can settle situations such as cheating and other player disputes.
Their Gaming Menu
This casino operates two gaming floors, so it’s going to have tons of slots and almost every game you can think of.
The first gaming floor is located on level one and is right where you enter while the second gaming floor is located on level three. The second one is known as the Sovereign Room.
The Sovereign Room focuses more on table games that range from $25 all the way up to $75,000. It’s meant to be more of a high-roller room.
You can play in what they call the Inner Sanctum as well, which offers table games that range from $100 to $500,000. Those are some incredibly high limits.
These two spots are very limited as well and only accessible for high rollers and other international guests that submit an application for membership.
Moving down onto the main gaming floor, it’s situated with three different main areas. The first would be the table games, followed by electronic gaming and then finally poker.
The table games section features a variety of different classic table games that everyone recognises. Among them are:
Two-Up is one table game that got recently removed from the casino because management didn’t feel that they could put three dealers and multiple supervisors all in one spot when they could be better used elsewhere. Two-Up wasn’t the only game that got discontinued at the property, with Double-Chance being removed after players made fun of the high house advantage by calling it No Chance.
When it comes to the slots section, they have somewhere over 1,490 total machines. However, it has been reported that there is a limit on the gaming machines that they can have which is set at 1,500. These could be including slot machines, bingo, video poker and even rapid roulette. Similar to the table games, there have been a few electronic games that have been removed shortly after introduction.
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Controversy
Just like many other gaming venues around the world, the Star Casino isn’t without a history of some controversy.
It was reported that a senior manager over at Star Entertainment Group has misled the National Australia Bank when it came to a credit card issue. What happened was this individual was working with high rollers to essentially launder money. There were investigations done to determine if they had any criminal activity and it was, in fact, revealed that a treasurer in the ownership group named Paulinka Dudek mislead the National Australia Bank.
The large, suspicious transactions caused them to report their thoughts to the NAB, which is why they chose to contact Star Entertainment Group. These credit cards were apparently used for $900 million before they got disabled. The investigation pushed Dudek further on the matter and he admitted that he had a “very basic” knowledge of how Australia handles their anti-money laundering rules. Many people who were tracking the case kind of felt that he was simply portraying to be naïve.
Because of this issue, people began taking a deeper look into the casinos processes afterwards and wondering what else has slipped through the cracks. There was another instance of “international rebate business”, which are otherwise known as junkets, that was looked into.
That led to a deeper inquiry that took a broader look at how well the casino is limiting the effects of gambling harm on their guests over time.
Overall, though, these are small-ish blips on the radar. Wherever there is a casino, there are always concerns with money laundering, fraud and theft. The Stars Casino has had some issues but they’re essentially no different than any other shop.
Learn more about alternatives to land-based casinos like the Star — Read our online casino reviews and find a site to play your favorite casino games like online bingo, online poker, and more.
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